Obama and Tocqueville: thoughts on the inaugural journey

Barack Obama’s inauguration train pulled into Washington overnight after a journey from Philadelphia that commemorated a similar ride by the first Republican president Abraham Lincoln. Well-wishers lined the route to greet the President-elect and the Obama family took in the scenery as the normally two hour journey took nine hours (it was still a big improvement on Lincoln’s 1861 trip from Ohio which took 12 days). The not-so-express stopped in Baltimore for a trip to the War Memorial and also in Wilmington, Delaware to pick up that state’s senator and vice-President elect Joe Biden.

Now that the administration team is in Washington, the world awaits as the wheels of American democracy turn and the free world gets new leadership. The US’s first black president carries a weight of expectations from his many constituencies but has a wealth of national and international goodwill behind him as he takes the Oath of office on Tuesday. It was the biographer of American democracy (ironically a freedom frying Frenchman) Alexis de Tocqueville who said that in America all men were “born equal". However Tocqueville wrote that before slavery ended in the south and he was only too aware that rule did not apply to blacks. “The negro,” he wrote in Democracy in America (1835), “cannot have any control over his own existence without committing a theft”.

Whether or not a black President can heel centuries of racial discrimination remains to be seen, but Obama’s victory was certainly no theft. It is also notable that Tocqueville framed the “negro” as a he, and writing in the 1830s, he wanted to extend suffrage rights to black and Native American men only. It was unthinkable that any woman would have the vote. (It makes me wonder which of our ‘self evident truths’ will seem backwards to our descendents a century from now?) But he was prescient to know that sooner or later, that the destiny of the world would be tied up with America.

And as in 2007, a Democrat presidential win became increasingly likely, it was equally obvious that the country would have its first black or female president. To that end, I actually wanted Hillary to win at first, as she represented an even large disenfranchised group than Obama (perhaps a Democrat Condoleezza Rice would have been ideal). But as Obama opened up through the campaign, it was clear he was the most striking and intelligent candidate. Those type of candidates don’t always win of course, and even less likely as a young black senator of less than four years standing in the Senate. He got the media onside with occasionally inspired oratory. But it was his use of "netroot" democracy which tore up the rules of campaign finance and enabled him to outspend Clinton in the long war of attrition in the primaries.

With Bush’s reputation in tatters, it was always likely that Obama would beat any Republican candidate once he’d seen off Clinton. The GOP chose the least Bush-a-like player in the party, but the base could never really get fully behind the maverick McCain despite his war hero status. They brought in Sarah Palin to compensate for his age, unattractiveness, and liberalism, but after brief stardom she was immolated in an orgy of Late Night Comedy. Dubya’s internal and international failures hung over the Republicans like a bad smell. Obama seized the metaphor for change and by end of the Democrat convention he was already the President-in-waiting just counting down the days to Dubya’s demise.

Curiously it is George W. Bush who claims his favourite political thinker was Alexis de Tocqueville. Bush liked Tocqueville’s description of a healthy America polity thanks to its ubiquitous "associations" or community groups. But there are pitfalls with pushing Tocqueville’s prescriptions. As Ted Widner points out in the International Herald Tribune, “the chief danger is that people will actually read him.”

Tocqueville accurately predicted the rise of the commercial classes that would eventually capture power in America. He knew even then that the country’s relentless conformity would mean that dissent and extremism would never become part of the political landscape. He knew Americans were not interested in other cultures. But none of that criticism seems to matter to his reputation in the US. This week alone, his words were not only quoted in the IHT but also by, among others, the Miami Herald's editorial about the inauguration, The Nation's story about Obama’s international impact, a letter to the Salt Lake Tribune about Abu Ghraib, The Baltimore Sun's story about the impact of TV, The Independent's (UK) story about Lincoln and even in the New York Times’s review of Slumdog Millionaire.

The humorist Russell Baker once suggested that of all the great unread writers, Alexis de Tocqueville is the most widely quoted. But it is true that for over a century and a half, his book has held up a mirror to Americans, allowing as Gerald Bevan puts it, “each generation to see themselves and their values in it”. What will Obama’s generation see in it?

America unimpressed with Bush’s last State of the Union

George W Bush defended his record in his seventh and final state of the union speech on Monday night. Bush claimed his administration had “answered the call” on issues relating to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the world economy and health and social welfare. Essentially Bush was talking up his record of neo-conservative military adventuring and free trade abroad while madly deficit spending at home. However while Bush was attempting to airbrush history, he introduced little new agenda in his near hour-long speech. It was also totally lacking in any attempt to address the world’s greatest problem: climate change.

Yet as usual the president received tumultuous applause. The joint houses here were applauding the office of presidency not its incumbent. Bush himself is gaining very few plaudits for his actions and is struggling to maintain any sense of relevance as the 2008 race for the White House hots up. With Bush’s popularity rating at a low 31 per cent, and second term rot setting in terminally, this year’s reception for the rehashed ideas in this speech was faint praise at best, and more often derisive and scathing.

CBS News compared how powerful Bush appeared in his 2005 speech, newly re-elected and “the most powerful person on the planet” to the “broken man” of 2008. The New York Times editorialised about “six years of promises unkept or insincerely made and blunders of historic proportions”. Meanwhile, the Washington Post also gave a damning indictment when it said Bush was “running on empty” and had “nothing new to say”. According to its political columnist Dan Froomkin “nothing he said will help bring the country together, or undo the damage he has done to American interests abroad, [or] will help him win back the trust or support of the American people, both which he lost a long time ago.”

Bush is the elephant in the room of 2008 Republican candidates who have all studiously avoided any mention of the president during the campaign. The Republicans have been on the nose since their defeat in the 2006 congressional elections. Bush exhausted all his political capital after his second election win. Most of this he squandered in 2005 with a failed bid to reform social security and a pork barrel spending binge on a highway bill. It was followed by the devastating impact (both physical and political) of Hurricane Katrina. Bush’s inept response to the crisis confirmed the impression that he was a bumbling fool. The continuing morass in Iraq didn’t help either.

This was Bush’s seventh State of the Union (his initial effort in 2001 was more of a budget speech). Messages to the Congress are mandated by Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution which states the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” George Washington clarified in 1790 that “from time to time” actually meant annually.

Until the early 20th century, the State of the Union was a written report sent to Congress. Woodrow Wilson changed this in 1913. He believed the presidency wasn’t just an impersonal institution; it was dynamic, alive, and personal. According to this philosophy, Wilson delivered an oral message to Congress. While Coolidge and Hoover both reverted to the written report, Franklin Roosevelt firmly established the modern tradition of an oral State of the Union.

In his 2008 speech Bush mentioned the word “terror” or “terrorist” 23 times. Gore Vidal asserted that the “war on terror” was as absurd as a “war on dandruff” because it is impossible to go to war against an abstract noun. In 2004 Chalmers Johnson painted a damning picture of Bush’s legacy in his book The Sorrows of Empire. Johnson's fourfold prediction is more apt than ever today. They are: a state of perpetual war, a significant loss of democratic and constitutional rights, a system of glorification of the military, and economic bankruptcy. No wonder America is anxious to move on from the Bush era.

Bush at home in the Balkans

After running the gauntlet of protests in Germany and Poland, US President George W Bush is enjoying a better reception on his two day to the Balkans. Bush is now in Bulgaria, on the second leg of his Balkans tour after his astonishingly successful eight hour visit to Albania. In Sofia, the greeting was more low key, but is also expected to be cordial as Bulgaria is now a member of NATO, hosts several US military installations and has agreed to extend its small Iraqi deployment through to the end of 2008. The only cloud on the horizon is the US decision not to deploy its missile defence shield in the country.

On Monday, Bush will have a day of talks with Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. The country’s government hopes to change Bush’s mind about excluding southern Europe from the defence shield. The country is also worried by the clash between Bush and Russian President Putin over the shield. Bulgaria can see both sides of the quarrel as a former loyal ally of the Soviet Union and now an emerging EU democracy and may have a role to play in placating their Slavic big brother.

But however cordial the welcome in Bulgaria, it will be unlikely to match the extraordinary scenes of presidential adulation in Albania. George Bush may have record-low approval rating at home, but in Tirana he could do no wrong. His short visit was the first ever by a US president to this mostly Muslim country. Bush was greeted by Prime Minister Ali Berisha who described him as the "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times".

Bush was greeted like a conquering hero when he went for a walkabout on the streets of the capital Tirana. People clamoured to get close to him and clapped and cheered, many wearing cardboard Uncle Sam hats and carrying signs saying Albania welcomes President Bush. Officials matched the warmth of the country’s people by awarding Bush the Order of the Flag medal, putting his image on a postage stamp and renaming a street in front of the parliament in his honour.

Bush responded in kind by signalling he was running out of patience with Russia’s stalling on the independence of Kosovo. The mostly-Albanian populated former province of Serbia has been run under the auspices of the UN and NATO since the war in 1999 but Russia rejected calls for its full independence at the G8 summit in Germany last week. Bush played to his Albanian audience by saying "Sooner rather than later you've got to say `Enough's enough - Kosovo is independent.”

Like Bulgaria, Albania has troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has tripled its troop numbers in Afghanistan to 140, and has about 120 troops in Iraq. Albania hopes the visit will help the country’s bid to join NATO and the EU. Government spokesman Grid Roy said it was the primary goal of the government and 94 percent of Albanians support integration into the international organisations. The country with its population of 3.5 million remains desperately poor and subject to mass emigration.

Albania emerged as a national identity out of the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century local intellectuals standardized the Albanian language which was a unique mixture of Latin, Greek, and Slavic dialects, in process creating a literary style for educational use. Albania gained local autonomy in 1911 and used the Balkan Wars of the following two years to gain full independence. But it came at a cost, the Kosovo province was ceded to Serbia.

After World War I, the newly created Kingdom of Yugoslavia backed Albanian chieftain Ahmed Bey Zogu believing him to be a pliable tool of Belgrade. But Zogu had his own ambitions become Prime Minister in 1924 and turning himself into King Zog in 1928. Zog looked to Italy for support and over the next 15 years Albania would become a pawn of Mussolini’s Fascist empire. The Italian military overthrew him in 1939 and ruled the country directly until defeated in 1944.

Internal resistance against the Italians and Nazis was formed a communist insurgency led by Enver Hoxha. Hoxha got crucial British support in 1944 to take control of the newly independent Albania. He installed a Marxist government and ruthlessly suppressed all opposition. For the next 40 years he pursued an increasingly isolationist policy with first Stalin and then Mao, as his only distant ally. Hoxha died in 1985 and the country underwent significant upheaval as Communism fell apart in Eastern Europe at the end of the decade.

In 1990 Albania reorganised itself into a multiparty democracy. The EU was quick to support its process of institutional, political and economic reform. Since then, the country has set a path towards a market-based economy. Initially the country went backwards with much economic hardship as government run enterprises stalled. The entire industrial sector collapsed shortly after Albania emerged from communism, triggering an exodus of 300,000 people to Italy and Greece. In 1997, the country descended into anarchy following the collapse of fraudulent pyramid investment schemes

In 2000, at Summit Zagreb the country joined the rest of the Western Balkan nations in signing a crucial stabilisation and association process agreement with the EU. The EU reaffirmed its commitment at the 2003 Thessaloniki Summit to the integration into the Union of the countries of the Western Balkans. Albania’s growing westernisation is also underscored by its desire to join NATO. While meeting Bush, Prime Minister Berisha said the country would increase its defence budget by 2 per cent. A beaming Bush will gladly accede, if only for the chance to repeat an increasingly rare positive photo opportunity.

Four More Years?

George Bush has called for “patience” with US policy on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraqi War. The President’s speech was directed primarily at the Democrats who are pushing a war spending bill in the House which would require US troops to leave Iraq by 1 September 2008. Bush has promised to veto the bill because it contains a timeline.

Such a move is unlikely to be required as the bill has little chance of passing the Senate. Bush is trying to stop the bill in the House to avoid the embarrassment of a conflicting message coming from a US legislature and what message that might send to the world. The White House said the bill "would place freedom and democracy in Iraq at grave risk" and "embolden our enemies." The vote is for a $124 billion spending bill, $95.5 billion of which is targeted for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The remaining $29.5 billion are an effort to lure votes with lawmakers' pet projects which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia.

The extra cash is a bribe for Republicans to promote agriculture and drought relief, children's health care and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery. Meanwhile the activist group MoveOn.org have thrown their weight behind the bill and claimed that 85% of its 3 million members back the bill. This is a boost for Democrats worried that the liberal wing of the party were unhappy about supporting the 2008 date and wanted to see a full withdrawal this year.

But the US will have to contemplate exit from Iraq sooner or later. The Bush strategy has always been to castigate his opponents for their “cut and run” tactics. According to this argument, the Democrats are incapable of fighting the so-called “War on Terror” and that any early withdrawal will be a victory for terrorism in Iraq. Bush backs this up by his quotation from the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate which posits the notion that if would-be terrorists are seen to be successful in Iraq, it will inspire more fighters to continue elsewhere.

But this remains an untested and controversial notion. In Iraq, people have grown tired of the occupation and its accompanying hassles. Four years on, a growing percentage of the Iraqi people are annoyed at US failure to provide stability or basics like electricity and water. They also hate the constant litany of explosions, gunfire and warfare. There are also the smaller daily annoyances: waiting hours in traffic due to checkpoints and road closures, searches and having weapons pointed at them by suspicious soldiers.

Meanwhile the body count continues to rise. According to Iraq Body Count the war has so far claimed the lives of somewhere between 59,000 and 65,000 Iraqis. Some 3,200 members of the US military have been killed since the war began, 2,600 of those in combat. The estimate of US wounded is somewhere between 23,000 and 100,000. 257 troops have died from the other Coalition countries.

The controversial 2006 study by the esteemed British medical magazine Lancet claimed the Iraqi figures were grossly underestimated and had reached 655,000 deaths by October 2006. According to their data, 56% of these deaths were from gunshot wounds, with a further 13% from car bomb injuries and 14% the result of other explosions. Lancet editor Richard Horton said the new study "corroborates the impression that Iraq is descending into bloodthirsty chaos".

Out of that chaos has come the biggest threat to US rule: the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The Mahdi army of a few thousand existed during Saddam’s reign but have gained new power and kudos among the Shiites since resuming the fight against the American-led coalition. They gained access to unguarded Iraqi ammunition dumps in the immediate fall of the Hussein regime from which they acquired light weapons, submachine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

Al-Sadr's militias control much of Baghdad including Sadr City. They have now heavily infiltrated the Iraqi police and army units that have been trained and armed by the US. 1st Lt. Dan Quinn, a platoon leader in the Army's 1st Infantry Division has pointed out the problem "Half of them are [Mahdi]” he said. “They'll wave at us during the day and shoot at us during the night”.